Don’t Subsidize Sex — Or Anything Else

Conservatives have a hard time taking the liberal line on the HHS contraception mandate seriously. Isn’t it simply lunatic to argue that failing to subsidize birth control is tantamount to restricting women’s sexual freedom — that it’s punishing women for having sex?

Yet it isn’t lunatic at all, not according to the logic of subsidy that Republicans and all too many Christian conservatives, no less than Democrats and liberals, generally accept. And framing this issue primarily as one of religious liberty won’t give conservatives an easy win; far from it, doing so will only aggravate liberals and alienate a great many women, including religious ones.

Think of how this would play out if food subsidies, rather than insurance mandates, were at issue. There’s an obesity epidemic, we’re told, and obesity leads to lots of medical problems that even the fit have to pay for since private insurance and government entitlements spread the expense. Democrats propose that rather than having too many people on food stamps, we don’t have enough: if everyone were on food stamps, there would be no more stigma, and government could regulate the program to ensure that everyone had at least one healthy meal a day.

Republicans, displaying their typical fidelity to free markets, come back with an alternative proposal: it would be socialism if government were to enact this scheme directly, and it would certainly call for higher taxes. But if there’s an individual mandate for people to buy a “healthy meal plan,” that’s ok, and there can also be a mandate that employers provide their employees with a choice of healthy meal plans. This is ok because Republicans generally understand choice, even coerced choice among limited alternatives, as the definition of freedom. (Cf. not only Romneycare, but perennial movement-conservative proposals to voucherize education and semi-privatize social security.)

So, do churches have to offer kosher or halal meal plans? Maybe they get an exemption: it’s understood that their own employees will generally be members of the faith. But what about church-owned businesses and other entities — Catholic hospitals and charities, for example? Does Uncle Sam tell a Jewish neurosurgeon: You work for a Catholic hospital, and you have to buy a meal plan, but the hospital doesn’t have to offer a plan that includes certain choices that are very important to you; you have to pay out of pocket for that.

Some doctors would take offense at this. But many would never even notice the absence of the privilege, and even those who did would not necessarily feel discriminated against: perhaps church-owned institutions have made their decision on purely business grounds. Halal and kosher meals are an extra expense, after all. The situation looks altogether more sinister, however, if by default — owing to a government mandate — halal and kosher meals are covered, but churches and church-owned businesses then organize for the specific purpose of revoking this requirement. Suddenly Jewish and Muslim employees will have good cause to wonder why their needs are so objectionable, especially considering that they are being effectively taxed (albeit by their employer, not directly by the state) for the meal plans they are forced to buy.

Social conservatives believe that religious liberty and claims of conscience trump all. But notice how such a claim in this case would actually give the dispute a darker tint: denying Jews and Muslims the meals that are important to their ways of life on fiscal grounds would be an exercise in heartless utilitarianism. But to do so on religious grounds looks a lot like bigotry. And in real life, where the HHS regulations are concerned, there’s a clash between the religious liberty asserted by Christian conservatives and the newfangled reproductive freedom asserted by liberals. How does one weigh a rights claim against another rights claim? Power decides — a savage political and media struggle must ensue.

This is bad for conservatives on two grounds. First, the highly emotional identity politics that results will not be good for the deliberative temperament that’s vital for keeping power in check a democratized republic. Even if the right “wins,” discourse will be degraded. Second, winning is not very likely considering the tendency of human nature, the nature of popular government in general, and the specifically liberal architecture of our government today. These fundamentals militate against America becoming an ethically Christian republic in any durable sense, even one broadly defined.

In short, the battle is lost as soon as the logic of subsidy is conceded. Subsidies and mandates create new moral clashes that are only resolved by power, and power in a democracy does not favor difficult standards of any sort.

Now, birth control may not matter to women as a part of their way of life in quite the same way as kosher meals matter to Jews as part of theirs, but is it still a thing of great personal importance? In many cases, yes, and not just where liberal women are concerned. Single women who are Christian and conservative can also feel quite strongly about this, even if they’re not sexually active. Whether or not they want to live in a certain way, they don’t want men in Washington or the bosses who select their health-insurance options to be the ones making the decision. Quite apart from the substance of the issue, it’s procedurally demeaning.

There’s also this psychological fact to take into account: people with strong values are likely to feel more ashamed than most of doing things that disagree with those values, and additional guilt trips meted out, even inadvertently, by men in authority will provoke resentment. It’s a thorny subject, all the more so considering the unequal standard that exists among most religious people, no less than secular ones, when it comes to the connotations of the words “slut” and “stud.” (Would a female politician with the checkered sexual past of a Newt Gingrich be as popular with his voters?) Married conservative women may be largely free from suspicion about their reputations. Liberals perhaps care less about expectations (though not necessarily). Single conservative and Christian women, on the other hand, are acutely jeopardized: little less than perfection is expected. One dead Turk can ruin everything. So yes, they can feel just as strongly as liberal feminists about this, even if they’re less likely to say so. The discreet possibility of an alternative to traditional virtue is, for many, an essential escape hatch, even if one they prefer never to use.

All of which leads to the nigh inevitable conclusion that most insurance policies are sooner or later going to cover birth control. If HHS isn’t mandating it, the market will move in that direction of its own accord, which raises difficult questions about the nature of compulsion: if it’s tyranny when the government forces you to do something, what is it when the market gently pulls you toward a particular choice? The moral burdens are actually reversed — one is not very culpable for what one is forced to do; but what one does by neglect of one’s own values must weigh on the soul.

Even so, there are more possibilities on the market than there are in national government. The surest way to preserve the possibility of living according to religious values is by rejecting the logic of subsidy outright. Ironically, some Christian conservative leaders have been among the biggest advocates of subsidies in the form of “faith-based initiatives” and the Bush approach to putting federal dollars behind religious charities. Even when that works as a tactic, however — when it gives churches greater resources without immediately subjecting them to more restrictive regulation — it fails as a strategy because it leads social conservatives as well as liberals to look to Uncle Sam to bankroll morally worthy projects, be they soup kitchens for the homeless or health insurance and healthy meal plans for everybody. The ineradicable problem is that one man’s morally worthy project is a violation of another man’s, or woman’s, conscience.

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21 Responses to Don’t Subsidize Sex — Or Anything Else

If it was a market, the Catholic and other churches could self-insure, form a co-op, etc. There would be no market drifting. The Knights of Columbus have life insurance, adding health would not be difficult. With Obamacare, I can’t even cross state lines to buy coverage.

And as Humanae Vitae predicted, contraception turns women into safe objects of pleasure for men. That is more demeaning than anything out of DC. Some women are porn stars and don’t see any shame, but that is their defect.

Advice to “conservatives” and other elderly white males – Stop talking about contraception!!

The public sees through the motives of the so-called religious objections of the bishops and others, and their transparent hostility to the president. The utter lack of any opposition to so many other injustices of the US over the past 10 years coupled with such exquisite moral sensitivity to women and their behaviours is utterly risible. Conjuring up religious objections to this trivial issue (and an insurance policy that has been inplace in several states for several years) is pathetic!

At least there is one benefit to all this – the rethugs will earn themselves a pasting come November…..

And as Humanae Vitae predicted, contraception turns women into safe objects of pleasure for men. That is more demeaning than anything out of DC. Some women are porn stars and don’t see any shame, but that is their defect.

Perhaps the reverse is (also) true? Many women rather sincerely enjoy sex, and don’t see themselves at all as victims or objects in their romantic encounters. And probably more than a few consider their male partners in such liaisons to be little more than pieces of meat.

Seventy-five million can’t afford health care when they become ill, because there’s no such thing as affordable health care or affordable health insurance.

How does mandating even more gold-plated coverage for something that is not a condition, that apparently, from the Fluke testimony, costs thousands per year per policy. in profits paid to big pharma and rich insurance companies per “patient” make health care or policies more affordable rather than ever more out of reach for the uninsured?

Health care is being rationed in the worst way with ever more have-nots deprived as wages and benefits decline in real dollars.

Why do the “haves” get ever more fringe benefits to subsidize lifestyle choices while the “have-nots” can’t even get the basics for serious illness treatment?

This really places the optional pleasure seeking of some, without consequences of childbirth, on the backs of people who can’t afford treatment for serious diseases, because the resources are going to additionally subsidizing those who already have what they can’t get.

As for this being a woman’s sexual rights issue, which supposedly trumps any concern for the exclusion of many millions of people from health care altogether (and which will continue under the new insurance company enriching mandate) why as usual does this involve placing artificial hormones into only women’s bodies at some risk to their health? They certainly do have side effects – read any of the labels and remember Dep Provera, etc. of the past.

Why is there no burden-sharing for men by drugs – who obviously don’t want their own reproductive systems messed with – except when they want Viagra.

The priorities of greed, materialism, self-indulgence and selfishness and a completely uncaring attitude to the ill who can’t afford the luxury of health insurance (note the recent cheering of the indigent left to die because of medical bankruptcy ) evidenced by the corporate elite are actually society-wide, shared American “values.”

Those who object to requiring health insurance plans to cover contraception for woman on the grounds that they “don’t want to subsidize sex,” fail to acknowledge that all of us are “subsidizing sex” when we are forced to pick up the far heavier tab for Karen Santorum’s 7+ babies. The only difference is that we are forced to subsidize “unprotected sex” in the Santorums’ case. And the financial burden continues long after the babies are delivered, as we are all forced to pay for their schooling, tax exemptions are provided reducing the tax burden on the overly productive parents and shifting that cost to others, etc., etc.

Of course, purely by historical accident, all health insurance is overly subsidized. It was because of the wage and price controls in effect during WWII that someone came up with the brilliant idea of increasing pay to workers (thus avoiding wage caps) if we didn’t tax health insurance benefits provided to workers. That tax scheme continues to this day and results in the overuse of health insurance. Unlike most noncash employee benefits which are taxed, employer provided health insurance continues to enjoy tax exemption. If an employer were to pay for an employee’s home insurance or automobile insurance, such payments would be included in the employee’s income and taxed, just like cash wages or salaries.

Of course you can. First off, taking you quite literally, you can move. However, more to the point you most certainly can buy insurance from a company in another state. The only requirement is that that policy must meet your state’s regulations. (This is true of all insurance by the way, not just health.) Which is perfectly reasonable and sensible: you a resident of your state, why would not expect its laws to apply to you? You would not (I hope) argue that because there are states with higher speed limits than yours, you must be allowed to drive at those speeds because you prefer them to the local speed limit.
If you disagree with your state’s laws and regulations then you can of course work to havet hem changed. Or your an move, You do have options here, and in regards to insurance they are no more limited than they are in regards to any other law or regulation that is set at the state level.

A couple of other points: the ACA is not to be blamed for the fact that you must buy policies that your state approves of; it’s always been that way, and, again, not just for health insurance.

And, if you dislike having insurance regulated at the state level then the alternative is to regulate it at the federal level.

Re: Of course; the fall-back position is the 10th amendment to the Constitution; which denys the Federal government a roll in this issue; as well as most others it chooses to stick it’s nose into….
However; few seem to care any more

Few notice because the 10 amendment does not mention health insurance, which did not even exist when it was written.

Repeal Obama care or nullify it. Repeal or nullify the NDAA. Repeal or Nullify No Child Left Behind. Repeal or Nullify the Great Society. Repealn or Nullify the Fair Deal. Repeal or Nullify the the New Deal. Repeal or Nullify the Fed. Repeal or Nullify the Square Deal.

And while we’re at it – and by “it” I mean not the “it” “it” of sex, m’lud, but the “it” of tabled deliberation – we might also consider the motion, “Don’t Sexualize Subs”. Sometimes a Five-Dollar Foot-Long on the one hand – as it were – and a Hammerhead, a Harder or a Hardhead on the other, are merely lunch or USSes. What this country needs is a good five-cent warhead. And though a maidenhood is only a maidenhood, a good Hyman G. Rickover is something Admirable and to be looked up – or rather down – to, whether you’re looking for a hero or a himo (not that there’s anything to either Ask or Tell), or someone who can play either in a pinch – in other words, a sub.

“Democrats propose that rather than having too many people on food stamps, we don’t have enough: if everyone were on food stamps, there would be no more stigma, and government could regulate the program to ensure that everyone had at least one healthy meal a day.”

Sorry – I must have missed the Democratic Party Central Committee’s Magisterium dictating that “everyone” should be on food stamps, that there are too few people on food stamps. I mean, the issue is confused enough as it is; why introduce an easily disproved and, frankly, moronic strawman into the mix?

tbraton is correct “… historical accident, all health insurance is overly subsidized. It was because of the wage and price controls in effect during WWII that someone came up with the brilliant idea of increasing pay to workers (thus avoiding wage caps) “

The injustice lies a long way back, revisions to such misbegotten fiscal policy could address much of what ails the sustainability of the social contract iin America. Pensions don’t generate income, the next generation of workers — ie those born to non-contracepting parents — do, by creating a sufficient return on the capital saved from the previous generation to pay out a dividend, but when the Federal Reserve can steal those returns from under our noses with Operation Swap most of the ‘subsidize or not’ debate is moot. The value of any subsidy and inherent moral hazard it implies are no longer under our control (monetary policy is negotiated between international bankers and the sovereign Treasuries whose credit paper ( debt in form of bonds) they manage via credit default swaps is actually a globally-centrally-planned form of socialism.

>The utter lack of any opposition to so many other injustices of the US over the past 10 years coupled with such exquisite moral sensitivity to women and their behaviours is utterly risible.

Huh? The Catholic Church has opposed American, and Israeli, war and torture in the Middle East for the last decade. Next time, get your facts straight.

If the RCs have made any but the most pro forma and cursory objections to any of the recent torturing and wars, it was missed by just about everyone. It would have been interesting to see the RCC take an equally stand on any of these massivly more important issues, but it is patently false to claim that this is what happened.

Why can’t everyone just admit that life begins at conception. That’s true of all animals, and we are after all animals–although, in a very few cases, thinking animals.

I mean, if a female bird sits on a fertilized egg, she gets baby birds. And if a male pig has sex with a female pig, one gets baby pigs. And if a man and woman (prior to old age) have sexual intercourse, one gets a human baby. Surprise! Surprise!

It’s funny when “liberals” criticize folk who don’t accept the facts about global warming, when they started the entire anti-science thing by stating that human life only begins one week after birth. Before then, they assert that it’s a mystery what if anything is there in the woman’s tummy.

However, it works the other way also. Conservatives are equally science illiterate when they attack contraception. Contraception prevents conception. Thus it does not harm anyone. There’s no baby yet.

I put some deep study into the primary sources some years back, but I probably will die before I finish the book. In short, the RC church has always taught that any enjoyment of sexual intercourse is a sin. It’s OK to do it to make babies, as long as one doesn’t enjoy doing it. Even a tiny speck of pleasure on the part of either partner renders heterosexual marital intercourse in the missionary position an evil sin that will lead to eternal damnation.

If you don’t believe that is and always has been the RC position, write me; and I shall send you the references. For example, that’s why RC priests were forbidden to marry in 396 AD. Because Roman Catholic believe that sex between a priest and his wife makes him filthy and depraved, and thus unworthy to consecrate the bread and wine at the Eucharist.

The Greek bishops refused to go along in 396.. They argued from prudence: If a man is not allowed sex in marriage, sexual frustration may lead him to rape altar boys. Of course, the Greeks turned out to be superb prophets, as we all saw with RC priests during the last century. However, the Greek bishops were not totally sex-positive. They did pass a law that priests must not have sex with their wives the night before they celebrate the Eucharist. I.e., they must fast from sex as well as from food and booze. (I wonder how many Greek priests at the present time know about and obey that rule, which has never been repealed.)

Unless you agree with the RC argument that EVERY sexual act is disgusting and vile, you cannot be against contraception. It harms no one, and it benefits many. After all, there are women who cannot safely bear children. Unless you agree with the RC bishops that those women must be perpetual virgins throughout their entire lives, you cannot oppose contraception.

You are right, subsidies beget more subsidies. Requiring government to pay for X is a sure way that someone else down the line will have the idea of having government pay for Y, Z, and so on. Inevitably, one of those will be something you are opposed to on deeply personal grounds.

This is why I can’t take big-government “conservatives” seriously. Sure, they say the next round of subsidies will only be for conservative causes, but it always legitimizes the next progressive round when, 2, 4, 8, 12 years later the political landscape changes.

The liberals of course want to have it both ways too – decide at individual level what contraception to use but have others pay for it. They willfully blind themselves to the fact that next thing government will be able to dictate it, for fiscal or other reasons practical to government, but not to the people – as has happened in countless things.